Ghostbusters: Tainted Love Proton Pack, Part 1

One thing that Wayne and I have discussed at length is the prospect of having all the main "movie style" proton packs in our RCGB arsenal. By that, we mean we want the movie packs, the video game pack, and the arm-mounted miniaturized proton pack from the Tainted Love comic book. So while Wayne built the game pack, I'm taking on the arm-mounted pack.

In the Tainted Love comic book, our hero Winston seeks to hit it off with a potential client, and offers their services pro bono in order to help woo her over. He also gets Egon to create these smaller proton packs in order to cause less collateral damage than is typical of their other jobs. These smaller packs are less powerful, so the plan is that they all have to work together to wrangle a ghost into the trap, as opposed to one or two of them.

A scan from the Tainted Love comic book.

What is appealing about the design, for one, is the significant weight reduction. The big proton packs are mounted to Alice frames, which are specifically designed to reduce the effects of weight on your body. Of course, the weight sets in anyways and we're all sore when the packs come off at the end of the day. The other appealing aspect of the design (at least for me) is that it is a new design but still highly based on the regular proton pack. Plus, because it's small, molding it will be pretty easy and the final build should be rather quick.

Others have built this pack before, so it's not something new to the costuming community. However, in pretty much all instances that I've seen it made, the prop is built way too big. Indeed they are all significantly smaller that the regular proton pack, but once you measure out the proportions from the comic book, the end product should actually be pretty puny compared to its big brother. Remember, the top portion starts above the elbow, covers the upper arm, and just barely peaks above the shoulder. So when you sit down and actually draw it out, it ends up being a lot smaller than you would think.

My notes taken from the illustrations in the comic.

For 2Story Props' version of the arm-mounted pack, I am starting with a 1-gallon Bondo can cap as the starting point. It's within tolerance of the specifications set in my original notes, being 6-3/4" in diameter as opposed to 7". It also has a slight bevel to it instead of straight sides (top diameter is 6-1/2"). But I think that will end up being a non-issue by the end of the project.

The miniaturized mother board, drawn to the specifications from my notes.

The "mother board" here is a sheet of sintra that is exactly 14" long (perfect for my notes' specs) that has been cut to the dimensions from my notes. I've also temporarily mounted the Bondo cap to it so I can build out the rest. The base of this top portion of the pack will mostly be sintra, probably with wood or other sintra details on top. The final prop will be a fiberglass casting, though, as all of this stuff will end up being molded.

The Bondo cap taped is taped in place while I flesh out the rest.

EDIT (8:50am, 09-24-10):

Last night I begun framing up the main body of the mini proton pack. Assembly so far has just been with sintra and hot glue. I've probably done about half of the major work right here. Aside from adding those missing panels and permanently fixing the Bondo cap in place, the rest of the work will just be clean up and detailing.